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I’m late, but I’ll play!
Early life: I was an athlete from a young age. Was skinny enough you could count individual ribs at 11 and 12, but my mother (a lifelong anorexic herself) put the entire family on the classic 90s very, very lowfat diet, because it was “healthy”. Remember having actual stomach pains because I was so hungry. The rare steak nights were the only time I ever felt full. I wonder why?
High School: My father needs to lose weight (despite being fed a very healthy low fat diet for years!), so he goes on Atkins/Sugar Busters. Then the whole family goes on a modified version, because it’s healthy! Only low fat, too, because fat is bad! I resort to getting what fat and carbohydrates I can at school, mostly in the form of candy bars and potato chips, as that was what was available. Somehow manage to gain 50 pounds in high school on a mostly meat and vegetables (and daily candy bar) diet while training 2 1/2- 4 1/2 hours aerobically a day as a serious competitive swimmer. I am living proof that the whole “Calories in, Calories out” stuff is total BS. Mother and swim coach get concerned. Blame it on the candy bars and being lazy.
Freshman, College: Promptly and effortlessly drop about 30 pounds via swimming and actually eating fats for the first time in my life (and carbs!)
Sophomore, College: Get injured, and stopped working out. Get depressed. Stop sleeping. Start eating thousands of calories a day, mostly free of nutrients. Learn how to drink a 2-liter bottle of diet coke for an all-nighter. Gained 50 pounds. Literally managed to gain a dress size in two weeks. Seriously- tried it on in the store, it fit, and then it wouldn’t zip two weeks later. However, I can vouch for the whole weight set point thing. After I gained a lot, I couldn’t put on a pound for a long time. And believe me, I tried.
Junior, College- Bulimia, as I tried to get back in shape for competitive sports. Isn’t life grand?
Senior year, college: Finish sports, go on the “screw it all” diet. This is essentially the diet where you mainline anything produced by Mars or the Nabisco corporation, and sleep from 5-9 am. Lots of binge eating. Gained about 20 more pounds.
Post-College: Attempted to get life back on track. Finally see a therapist who specializes in eating disorders. Ignore her sage wisdom of “eat a moderate amount of ice cream if you want it” and go hard-core paleo. Lose about 30-40 pounds with daily hour long workouts in a few months. Quit because logging every food I eat and circling all the days on the calendar that I wasn’t perfectly paleo is insane. Regain the weight after giving up.
Post-post college: Decide that intermittent fasting and periodic cleanses are the way for me to go. Don’t eat till noon. Then eat candy. Nails and hair commit mass suicide pact for lack of nutrients. Gained enough weight that I didn’t want to step on a scale ever again. Finally start listening to therapist that maybe crazy restrictions aren’t the way to break out of the lifelong terrible food culture.
Post-Post-Post college:At double the weight I was a decade ago, Screw it all diet 2, only with Diet Recovery and a goal of raising my body temperature. Finally understand the importance of sleep. Eat all the Hamburgers. Gain some weight, but feel good. Get temp. up in the 98s and 99s.
I’ve gradually moved into a more nutritious diet, after about 5 months of hamburger heaven. Junk food doesn’t hold the same appeal anymore, and I’ve found that after getting my temperature up to normal, I’ve been slowly losing weight as long as I make sure to get lots of nutrients. I drink two gallons of raw milk a week. I eat delicious soups with potatoes and rice. I actually get excited about cooking and eating. I’m sleeping more, and have made a personal goal to do exercise that I enjoy, not that I feel I need to do. I still feel like I need to lose some body fat for the sake of my long term health, but I’m a veritable furnace and feel really good most of the time. I used to think that I had permanently wrecked my body and my metabolism, but now I feel like there’s hope I’ll feel like a normal person with normal eating habits someday. To someone who has struggled with eating disorders and binge eating for a long time, that’s huge.
Oh- and being too lazy to remove myself off the Mark’s Daily Apple, I had a great chuckle today when I saw that he’s now touting Resistant Starch supplements. It appears the Paleo community is slowly coming around to the concept of potatoes. It gave me a refresher in how much I appreciated Diet Recovery and 180 degree health for attempting to bring back sanity to the diet industry. I would probably still be on some sort of food group restriction if I hadn’t stumbled on it.
@spacekablooey, thanks for telling your story. I would have said, “thanks for sharing” but that phrase has become so cliche that it makes me puke when I hear it :).
Glad to hear that you have benefited from the new “anti-diet”. You even seem to be doing Eat For Heat (EFH) in a reasonable way….balanced.
My suspicion is that this is an important stage, however, the next stage must be anticipated or people like yourself *MIGHT* end up reacting against the EFH and once again find themselves on the diet roller coaster.
What do I mean by that? Well, it is reported that there are people who do the “Eat for Heat”, gain some weight, but then, after a while, end up losing it. However, the few people I know from real life (including myself) who are doing something similar do not corroborate this. They gain the weight and it stays. At some point, people are going to get fed up with this and revolt. If they are not careful, this revolt could lead back to the “diet roller-coaster”.
Look I am not a “hater” of fat people. I am neither promoting the anorexic “super model” look. That said, I don’t think being overweight is healthy. “Overweight” is a subjective term, I know, and I will let you decide what it means for yourself. For me, it’s this. I am 6’1 and muscular. I look and feel good around 210 pounds (94 kgs). Now I am 240 pounds (109 Kgs). For someone my age, the effect has not been purely aesthetic. For the first time in my life, I have high blood pressure. That might not happen to someone younger, but I’m 54. It was a wake up call. Now in case anybody wants to challenge me on the blood pressure issue, let me say this. I know that the definition of HBP has changed over the years. However, my blood pressure has, at times, got as high as 170/98 and been accompanied by symptoms (dizziness, difficulty breathing, etc).
So what am I going to do? Well I am going on a diet! Not a radical one. It will just mean eating less starch (not eliminate entirely), eat widely, watch my calories. In the meantime, I have gone on medicine. Once my blood pressure stabilizes a bit, I will (much to the chagrin of the Peatarians reading this) replace it with L-Arginine.
My point isn’t to dis’ Eat for Heat. However, I really think it’s an approach that is beneficial for a while, but then needs to be superseded by something more moderate. Of course, the time spent beneficially following Eat For Heat will vary according to the individual.
Hey spacekablooey,
My goodness, what a history; but I’m so glad that you are feeling better! For whatever it’s worth, I just wanted to second what Thomas said. I also feel you may be at a critically point (important stage).
I obviously can only speak from my limited experience, but I benefited greatly from the whole “eat whatever the hell you want and forget about exercise” approach. The problem occurred when I didn’t stop. I gained weight (not in a good way), and I sported a very sexy blood pressure of 160/100 that happened to hang around until I lost the weight. (I was never anywhere close to being overweight; I just weighed too much for me.)
It’s not that I regret trying this approach (well, I actually kind of do), but the real issue was that I didn’t stop when I knew that I should. I should have been more aware and mindful of what was going on, and listened to my body.
A cautionary tale. Good luck, and I hope you have continued success!
I agree with both Leighton and Thomas, but it sounds like you are at a good point, spacekablooey. I think where people mostly gain lots of weight is when they go nuts and eat lots of junk or force feed, etc. The goal should be to transition to a healthy, balanced diet (not a diet, diet) where you listen to your body and get plenty of nutrients. I’ve been doing that for years after getting out of my ED and guess what, it works and you maintain a healthy weight and don’t feel deprived.
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